Affinia Therapeutics, a Waltham-based biotech working on gene therapies to treat diseases using technology developed at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, said Monday it has raised $110 million in a new venture capital round.
The company, which was founded in 2019 based on work pioneered by Luk Vandenberghe, an associate professor at Mass. Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School, plans to use the money to advance its gene therapy technology and move experimental drug programs into clinical trials.
Gene therapies are among the most promising, if technologically challenging, areas of medicine. By engineering a virus to carry functioning genes to cells to compensate for defective ones, drug makers have developed several revolutionary treatments for devastating genetic diseases, from a rare neurodegenerative disorder to a form of blindness.
